TG Chat Thread 2017

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Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

NorgLyle posted:

BESM is a fantastic game as long as you don't use any of the rules. Sit around the table in a group, make up characters, write down some stuff about them on paper and every time someone tries to do anything roll 2d6 and make up a result vaguely based around what they rolled; it's not meaningfully different than playing actual by-the-book BESM and it means you never have to think about the way damage works.

BESM: A game designed by a man who likes anime far more than he likes game design.

The key to understanding BESM is knowing that Mark MacKinnon loves Amber Diceless and doesn't believe that game designers have any power to help with things like game balance.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2017 04:00

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 08:25

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

There was also the thing that MacKinnon fought tooth and nail against switching to a roll-over mechanic for BESM until David L. Pulver grabbed him, sat him down, and forced him to play out a combat with two guys with really high combat stats to see how miserable it was. Of course, that only happened in 3rd Edition, which only saw a limited print run because White Wolf rescued it from the dumpster fire that was Guardians of Order going out of business.

If the general concept of BESM as a relatively light universal RPG with anime flair appeals to you, then OVA is by far the better choice. OTOH I've realized that if you want to do anime-inspired RPG stuff, the thing to do is to stop thinking of anime as "special" and just sit down an analyze it like you would any other source material. It's also good to not limit yourself to anime for inspiration, especially since the better anime creators aren't doing that either.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2017 18:58

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

I still find it just bonkers that Paizo decided to go from "never did anything with video games before" to "let's make an MMO!" The ridiculously obvious thing would be to start with smaller Pathfinder-branded games in genres that aren't ludicrously difficult to succeed in, and maybe eventually do an MMO if the intervening games do well enough.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 16:40

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Shinobigami is interesting so far of what I've read and played of the alpha version, though the final version isn't out yet. It's modern ninja but you could probably move it over to a historical setting with little effort.

I'm not sure what Andy and Matt are planning to do in the way of supplements, but for the Japanese version there are book for the Sengoku and Heian eras, and also... pro wrestling?

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 04:40

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Ettin posted:

This is why I got Ironicus to make a Breakfast Cult audio book

He offered to do an audiobook of Kagegami High for the same price he charged for BC, and I don't know if I can justify subjecting him to that, but it would be amazing to have someone spend an hour and a half reading a table of 216 morning announcements.

Also Kagegami High is out in PDF and I am very tired. It's anime schoolgirl Welcome to Night Vale by way of a Maid RPG variant with lots and lots of tables.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2017 16:03

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I'm going to point out, since Cluney didn't, that The World of Millennium Blades art book also just came out to backers. I mention this because it includes Duel Questers, a short RPG written by Cluney set in the Millennium Blades universe. (You still need a copy of Millennium Blades itself to play it, of course.)

Oh hey, I did not know that that had come out. MB has the most amazingly bonkers setting (every TCG anime at once, held together with time travel and aliens), and it was really fun to play around with it and even put my own stamp on it.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2017 05:04

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Since people were asking I emailed Brad Talton and he said the Millennium Blades art book should be going up for sale on Friday.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 03:12

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Agent Rush posted:

Hey, this is going on the Level 99 store, right? I haven't seen it yet, either it's not up or I'm looking in the wrong place.

Apparently it took them a bit longer than planned, but it's up now:
https://www.level99games.com/shop/the-world-of-millennium-blades

# ¿ Mar 9, 2017 17:44

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Ferrinus posted:

The really crucial thing here is that this is an outright lie on Alexander's part. The "only answer" was that martial exploits represented moves so physically and mentally taxing that you needed a long rest before you could attempt them again, same as every other non-magical per-day ability that's been in D&D. You could have raised the same bullshit objection to stunning fist or barbarian rage back in the day.

Going by the accounts of early D&D's development process, simulation wasn't really a concern for Gygax & co., and there was the thing where he called realism "the last refuse of the scoundrel." If "dissociated mechanics" are a thing, then D&D had a bunch of them from the very beginning. The whole thing would've made more sense if they went on to advocate for playing GURPS or any of the other RPGs that completely destroy D&D in terms of being more realistic and having more "associated" mechanics.

4E did have some actual problems that needed fixing, but Essentials totally ignored them in favor of failed attempts to placate the kind of people who held 4E book burnings. But then personally, after playing it for a decade or so, I pretty much feel like I've done enough D&D, regardless of the edition.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2017 21:54

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

The other day I remembered about the 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction podcast, which it turns out last put out an episode in 2014. Are there any good RPG podcasts people would recommend? I'm mainly interested in, like, industry news and designer interviews.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2017 23:36

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Countblanc posted:

https://twitter.com/McBiggitty/status/851625697156124672

Man, I still have this and all of the supplements for it. White Wolf really had no idea how to deal with Japanese fighting game characters, but in some ways that just made it even more amazing.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2017 18:21

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

EverettLO posted:

Except in the Planescape book where it turns out she's a daughter of Poseidon and fled an arranged marriage before making herself into the inscrutable arbiter of Sigil. Her motives were to avoid ever going back. If I remember it right. It was like the Metroid: Other M of genre fiction. Man, they never should have written that.

As I recall the original Planescape boxed set mentioned that (1) the Lady of Pain is ultimately just a symbol of the mysteriousness of the multiverse, and (2) people who try to worship her as a goddess typically turn up dead, with their skin flayed off (which is probably where her moniker came from). In Pages of Pain she mentions that she can't allow herself to be worshiped because she has to not be a god in order to keep the other gods out of Sigil and messing things up. Which is sort of a neat idea, but having revelations about a character whose main purpose is literally to be mysterious seems kinda counterproductive.

The Planescape novels were not good, and were really weird. The major thing I remember is that one of the heroes got shrunk down and was like building a kingdom with insects and pieces of dandruff and stuff. I may be misremembering, because that was literally about 20 years ago.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2017 23:36

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

The other day I picked up a copy of the AD&D1e DMG from a used book store, and today I noticed the receipt.

https://twitter.com/nekoewen/status/857261671714217984

# ¿ Apr 26, 2017 18:21

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

The other day I made one of those dumb "1 Like = 1 X" Twitter memes, but about game design, and a bunch of people have done it since, putting a lot of really interesting commentary out there:
https://storify.com/Genesisoflegend/wisdom-from-game-design

# ¿ Jun 19, 2017 13:34

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Arivia posted:

Sorry, I should have said heart. And I don't like Zak but that's still a good post.

The idea that you should pursue your own vision and gently caress the haters and people will respond is awesome. It's really weird that he almost exclusively talks about doing that in terms of writing D&D modules though.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2017 16:49

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

The thing about sexual stuff in RPGs is that the people who truly want it will put that into their RP regardless of what the game designer did or didn't put into the book, and anything sexual that the designer does put in there will be a glaring source of discomfort for a lot of people, even if it's perfectly mature and consensual, among other things because most people RP with friends who they don't have that kind of relationship with. I tend to avoid putting stuff with sexual connotations in my games, but to me it feels less like a creative limitation and more like taking into account the kind of experience I want to design for.

I don't think it should be strictly PG-13, but the medium does seem to have a bit more than its share of weird sex stuff given the type of activity it is.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2017 02:51

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Plutonis posted:

http://moehistory.tumblr.com/

# ¿ Aug 24, 2017 18:11

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

ProfessorCirno posted:

Trust me - the Japan one is way, way funnier.

So, Record of Lodoss War! That was a thing. A really POPULAR thing. And so the people who made it tried to approach TSR to sell them the setting and to talk about distribution, since, hey, there's this super popular thing that was made using D&D!

TSR of course responded by telling them to gently caress off and never use D&D again, to uh, paraphrase.

So they didn't. They made their own game using those houserules, Sword World, and it went on to more or less boot D&D out of the country.

TSR didn't just fail to expand into the Japanese market, they failed so insultingly that the very people trying to help them created the game that dethroned them for good in the country.

As a consequence, although Japan's TRPG scene is even smaller than in the U.S., no one game dominates, and the design work that comes out there is more varied and innovative. Sword World is still one of the more popular RPGs in Japan, but there are plenty of others, including non-fantasy games.

Hobby Japan licensed D&D 3rd and 4th Editions, and put in a lot of work to make them a success in a country where they don't get to dominate by virtue of having the words "Dungeons & Dragons" on the cover, so of course WotC canceled all of the licensing agreements for foreign language editions and then after multiple years of silence on the issue told everyone to negotiate new contracts with Gale Force Nine from scratch, which is how Pathfinder started getting more foreign-language editions.

Ratoslov posted:

Also, Sword World, from what I've gathered, is basically a D&D modified to be sufficiently legally distinct from D&D to win a infringement lawsuit in Japanese court. With 80's anime artwork, so it's superior to the original in that regard, I guess.

Sword World has also continued an active publication history, and Sword World 2.0 has done a much better job of keeping up with how the fantasy genre has developed than D&D ever did. There are races and classes that are totally anime/JRPG things, so you can play an artificial humanoid or a Tabbit (a furry magical rabbit person), a martial artist or a magical gunner, and that's just the core rulebook available as a cheap paperback.

Kwyndig posted:

Most japanese games use 2d6 because the other polyhedrons are a bitch to find sometimes in Japan. It's not like they have FLGS over there.

The do actually have some nice hobby stores (notably Yellow Submarine), but not everyone in Japan can easily get to Akihabara. Polyhedrals have gotten a bit more common or at least less rare now (in part because of Sunset Games, which resells dice from Chessex and other manufacturers over there), so Double Cross uses a d10 die pool system, but 2d6 (or other small numbers of six-siders) is still really common.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2017 17:09

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

hyphz posted:

There is a legit kids MLP game, isn't there?

That would be Tails of Equestria. It uses a very simple die step system with Friendship Points you can spend to boost rolls and whatnot. You could probably do better for an RPG for kids, but you could definitely do a lot worse.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2017 00:50

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

gradenko_2000 posted:

is there a particular way you should read a normal d6 to sub it in as a Fate die? My book of Inverse World Fate finally arrived and I don't have the special stuff

So Fate originally started as a hack of Fudge, which was kind of designed by committee on Usenet, hence although they settled on those weird dice, they also came up with several alternate methods for making a roll with close to the same probabilities:

A few Fate games also just adopted a d6-d6 thing, where you have a positive die and a negative die, and you roll them both and subtract the negative from the positive. The probabilities are a bit different, but it's fairly quick and easy. Of course, if Inverse World Fate uses dice tricks that specifically require the special dice to work, none of that will really help much.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2017 19:44

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

occamsnailfile posted:

I do remember this brief window in time and it was something that made me happy for that reason...until they went and ruined it. Also the show's creator kind of ruined the show IIRC but I actually never watched it.

Hoping the brony-types have all been drawn to the Rick & Morty honeypot and leave Steven Universe alone.

SU fandom has had some bad moments, but the show itself is so queer and feminist that it repels most of the fedoralords. Of course, MLP is more than a little feminist too, but there are bronies who are actively in denial about it.

Mostly I just watch stuff and ignore the fandoms, and the internet keeps making that it seem to be the right decision.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2017 16:12

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Evil Mastermind posted:

(Squirrel Girl is still cool and good because it deliberately ignores every megaevent and is purposefully positive.)

During the Secret Empire garbage she and her friends were saving the Savage Land, which had partially become a dinosaur theme park, complete with a gift shop. The way they were geeking out about dinosaurs was the best.

At some point I want to make an RPG about superheroes who mainly help people and redeem villains.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2017 17:19

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Getsuya posted:

The Saikoro Fiction rolling mechanic is really nice but I can just picture some rear end in a top hat GM ruining it. The main concept is that every action skill is on a grid, and roll difficulty is determined by the number of slots between the target action and an action your character is trained in. If you have that skill the difficulty is 5 on a 2D6. Then for each slot between your skill and the target skill you add 1 to the difficulty.

Which is fine, but most of the games suggest enforcing an RP element. The player has to justify how the action they do have could resolve a check for another action. So the required action is climb but the closest action the player has is run. Some GMs may go �oh sure you run up the wall, that makes for a cool scene!� while another may say �lol this isn�t the Matrix, guess you�re screwed and can�t even roll for this check. Bad luck.�

On the one hand that GM doesn't have any business running a game like Shinobigami, but on the other hand they'd be a problem with Fate, PDQ, Wushu, etc. too.

Arivia posted:

Can we call this like devsplaining or something? Ewen was the translator on GSS, I'm pretty sure.

Yep! And I haven't quite made more GSS character types than the original designer, but I'm getting there.

And one of my too-many projects is a system that's a weird hybrid of GSS and PbtA that I'm calling "Powered by Dreams," which is what I'd probably use for the friendly superheroes game if I ever get around to it. (I even bought a bunch of little wooden lightning bolt tokens on the off-chance that I might use them for that.)

# ¿ Oct 31, 2017 22:29

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Nah, they just get generally marketed more towards a bookstore audience than the core comic readership, where things are more likely to vanish amongst the far larger market.

Well, besides manga the other thing that outsells superhero comics on the mainstream bestseller lists are the graphic novels aimed at a more mainstream audience that catch on. In terms of sheer numbers, Scholastic is probably one of the biggest U.S. comic publishers, and they're getting stuff to lots of kids by way of book fairs and such.

They're now saying that a really successful superhero comic issue will only sell around 50,000 copies total, but then we've still got the issue that we have no idea what the digital sales are actually like, which is the one area where superhero comics seem to be growing rather than retreating into being an IP farm for blockbusters.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2017 23:09

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Well, I think one of the problems with GURPS was just leaning hard into catering to the hardcore fandom rather than trying to develop something that might grow the game. 4th edition got me to walk; I was a deep GURPS fan when I was young, but deep enough to see most of the issues and to be disappointed when they got, at most, a band-aid on them.

It's an alright system if skills are kept from inflating too much and you're running a fairly grounded / "realistic" game - the 3d6 curve and the deadliness of damage means it scales very badly. It was definitely state of the art in 1986, but the heart of the system has remained largely unchanged since then. A lot of secondary systems like guns or vehicles went through heavy overhauls, but a lot of the issues with the 3d6 curve, a dodgy disadvantage system, god attributes, etc., have been only modestly addressed. Some of the best-researched and edited sourcebooks in the business, tho.

Although I've played GURPS a little bit, for me the value of GURPS books has always been for inspiration for other stuff. Its general books can delve into various topics with an absurd amount of detail. If you need ideas for spells that go beyond the usual D&D stuff, GURPS has spells for totally off the wall things like making crops healthier or making people fat. The setting books touch on a wide and eclectic range of stuff from history and fiction, to a pretty absurd degree. They've done an adaptation of Lensman, a whole series of books on WW2, and books on Aztecs, Russia, the ice age, the age of Napoleon... The DTRPG offerings so far seem to be the basic stuff for GURPS 4th Edition, but especially in 3rd Edition the line was crazy prolific. If you want to do something with a particular genre or era, you could do a lot worse than picking up the relevant GURPS books.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2017 17:27

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I can't say I've ever heard anything about that, but it has gotten accusations of having a conservative bent due to its lionization of the Imperial Japanese Navy and leanings towards historical revisionism re: WWII.

It mostly just seems crassly insensitive.

I think it was Gate that was a bit more blatantly right-wing, though not quite to the level of net uyo (kinda sorta Japan's alt-right). It's about the JSDF invading a ridiculous fantasy world, and the promotional art has lots of pics of guys in realistic modern military gear with over the top anime girls. But supposedly the anime adaptation toned down the political weirdness of the original web novel.

But yeah, I'd describe Kancolle as insensitive more than anything. It's hard to overstate how terrible the actions of the imperial Japanese military were. (Though of course there's a Kancolle TRPG, and it's by Toichiro Kawashima, the brilliant designer who did Meikyuu Kingdom and Shinobigami.)

# ¿ Nov 18, 2017 19:07

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 08:25

Ewen Cluney: May 8, 2012; Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Desiden posted:

Wait, is manga better for this? Asking seriously; I just assumed it would be like western comics vs. movies where the comics tended to crawl up their own asses and have lots more bizarro poo poo while the movies tried to streamline everything into a coherent narrative.

Like, I don't hate anime, but I don't really have the patience to sift through all the pandering crap anymore to find the gems. Plus the tendency of animes to show just a part of whatever manga they're based off of, often with very little resolution in the show, gets really annoying. If manga avoids a lot of that poo poo, I'd be interested.

Manga is all over the place because it's comics, except without America's history with the Comics Code leading to superheroes taking over for a while. None of the manga publishers do sprawling shared universes with crossover events, and for the most part each manga title is self-contained. There are some long-running ones that have dozens or hundreds of volumes, but also quite a few that will have like 4 volumes before they come to an end. Manga also isn't just aimed at adolescent boys and older man-children; there are whole genres of manga aimed at grown-ups. The manga that gets published in English tends to be the kind that appeals to anime fans, but the overall medium is pretty ridiculously diverse. Like, there are multiple magazines that specialize in manga about mahjong.

That's probably not especially helpful in terms of needing to sift through the crap to find the gems, but it's for different reasons than with anime.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2017 21:26

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Chat Thread 2017